Final Fantasy Guide
by Da-ec'te
Summary: A guide to the world made my Square Enix.


**Chapter 1-** Final Fantasy 1

 **Story by-** Da-ec'te

 **Disclaimer-** I do not own Final Fantasy. I was purely bored and wanted to write something other than a story.

 **Warning-** This story will contain spoilers. If you have not played and or watched Final Fantasy then the Table of Contents of this story will be on my profile!

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 **ファイナルファンタジー** (Final Fantasy)

Final Fantasy, also known as Final Fantasy I or the Original Final Fantasy in collections and common languages, is a role-playing game developed and published by Square Co., Ltd. for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was released in 1987, and it is the inaugural game in Square's flagship Final Fantasy series. Final Fantasy was Nobuo Uematsu's sixteenth work of video game music composition.

Since the original creation of Hironobu Sakaguchi, Final Fantasy has subsequently been remade for several different video game consoles and handheld systems, including the MSX2 computers (converted and released by Microcabin) and the Bandai WonderSwan Color. It has also seen versions produced for two Japanese mobile phone service providers: the NTT DoCoMo FOMA 900i series (as Final Fantasy I) and the CDMA 1X WIN-compatible W21x series of mobile phones from au/KDDI (as Final Fantasy EZ) and has also been made available with the American mobile companies, Sprint and U.S. Cellular, and the Canadian mobile company, Rogers.

The game has frequently been packaged with the next game in the series, Final Fantasy II. Compilations of the two games have been released for the Famicom, the PlayStation, and Game Boy Advance. Most recently, the game was released on Windows Phone as an Xbox Live title. The two have also been released separately for iOS.

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 **Gameplay**

Final Fantasy begins by asking the player to select the character classes and names of each Light Warrior (The player characters). Just like most computer role-playing games of that era, the player characters are passive participants in the story. Because of this, the player's choice of character class will only affect the Light Warriors' abilities in battle.

The character types are:

 **Warrior (Fighter)** — A specialist in heavy weapons and armor who can withstand tremendous amounts of punishment. Can become the Knight later in the game, who is able to use the most powerful weapons and some White Magic spells.

 **Monk (Black Belt)** — A martial arts expert who is best left fighting empty-handed, but may also wield nunchaku, and the most basic of staves. Does tremendous amounts of damage in combat, but cannot wear heavy armor. Can become the Master later in the game. In the original Famicom/NES version a high level, barehanded Master who is unencumbered by armor, can do more damage in a single attack than any other character type; a party of four Masters can defeat the final boss in less than two full rounds. A rather weak class in the beginning, but the player never has to buy much equipment for him.

 **Thief** — A high evasion/accuracy finesse fighter with very limited weapon and armor selection, but greater agility and luck (ability to escape from combat). However, the ability to flee is bugged in versions before the Origins release. Later in the game, the Thief can be upgraded to the Ninja class. Ninja can use almost every weapon and most armor, and can use many Black Magic spells.

 **White Mage** — A specialist in White Magic. Not a good fighter, but can use hammers for physical attacks and is focused on supporting the team with healing and enhancing spells for an advantageous edge to victory of the battle. Can be upgraded into a White Wizard, which allows the character to use the most powerful White Magic spells in the game.

 **Black Mage** — A specialist in powerful Black Magic, but is physically frail in other areas. Becomes the Black Wizard later on. Black Wizard is the only character who can cast Flare (NUKE in the original North American localization), one of the two damaging spells that retain full effectiveness against Chaos (the White Wizard can cast Holy, the other spell, but it is less powerful than Flare).

 **Red Mage** — A jack-of-all-trades character, able to use most but not all of both White and Black Magic, and possessing fighting abilities similar to but not quite as good as the Fighter. Becomes the Red Wizard later in the game.

Gameplay is similar to that of many other console role-playing games. The player wanders around a World Map, randomly encountering monsters which must be either dispatched in battle or fled from. Emerging victorious in battle earns the player Gil, which can be used to buy weapons, armor, curative items, and magic spells.

Victory also grants Experience, which accumulate until players achieve certain milestones ("experience levels") at which characters gain greater capacity for strength, damage resistance (known as Hit Points, or HP), and spell casting. The player can enter towns on the world map to be safe from random attacks, restore HP and spell charges, acquire information by talking to villagers, and shop. Battle is turn-based, i.e. players select the desired actions for their PCs (Fight, Cast Spell, Run, etc.), and when finished the PCs execute their actions while monsters retaliate depending on their Agility.

Every version of Final Fantasy also has a secret minigame, 15 Puzzle, that can be played out on the sea.

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 **Story(This part contains the ending of the game)**

Final Fantasy takes place in an unnamed fantasy world with three large continents. The world's elemental powers are determined by the state of four glowing crystals ("orbs" in the original North American localization), each governing one of the four classical elements: earth, fire, water, and wind.

About four centuries ago, a group of people known as the Lufenian used the wind crystal's power to craft a giant aerial station ("Flying Fortress") and airships, and watched their country decline as the wind crystal went dark. Tiamat, the fiend of wind, waged a battle against them, taking over their flying fortress and the Mirage Tower. A Lufenian called Cid hid an airship on the south continent.

About two centuries ago, Kraken, the fiend of water, used violent storms to sink the water shrine that served as the center of an ocean-based civilization to use it as his personal hideout and to darken the water crystal.

Shortly before the start of the game, Lich, the fiend of earth, darkens the earth crystal and plagues Melmond as the plains and vegetation decay. At an unspecified point, a sage called Lukahn tells of a prophecy that four Warriors of Light will save the world in a time of darkness.

Marilith, the fiend of fire, awakens two centuries early as a response to the Warriors of Light's appearance and darkens the crystal of fire.

The four Warriors of Light appear, each carrying a darkened crystal, one of each element. They arrive at Cornelia, a powerful kingdom that has witnessed the kidnapping of its princess, Sarah, by a rogue knight named Garland who wants to conquer the kingdom. The Warriors of Light travel to the ruined Chaos Shrine in the corner of Cornelia, defeat Garland, and return Princess Sarah home. The grateful King of Cornelia rebuilds the drawbridge enabling the Warriors of Light passage east of the country.

Traveling east, the Warriors of Light learn a dark elf wizard named Astos has been terrorizing the area surrounding the southern continent's inland sea, Elfheim, stealing a crystal the witch Matoya needs for sight, putting the prince of the elves into a coma, and stealing the crown of a minor western king. As they travel, they liberate the town of Pravoka from a band of pirates and acquire the pirates' ship for their use. The Warriors of Light travel across the water, but remain trapped within the Aldean Sea, in the center of a large continent. A large rock blocks the only exit from the sea. There is a group of dwarves in Mount Duergar trying to remove the rock, but they find themselves unable to proceed without Nitro Powder.

The Nitro Powder is contained in a locked room in Castle Cornelia, the only key to which is held by the sleeping elven prince. They retrieve the stolen crown, only to find the minor king was actually Astos. After defeating Astos, the Warriors of Light recover Matoya's crystal and return it to the witch, who makes them an herb (Jolt Tonic in later releases) to awaken the elven prince. The prince gives the warriors the Mystic Key, with which they travel to Castle Cornelia and retrieve the Nitro Powder, which they take to the dwarves to help them finish the canal. With the rock cleared, the Warriors of Light proceed into the greater world.

Sailing to Melmond, the Warriors of Light seek out and destroy the Fiend of Earth, the Lich, who is responsible for the earth's rotting. The Warriors of Light enter the volcano Mount Gulg and defeat the Fiend of Fire, Marilith, who was awakened two hundred years prematurely by the defeat of Lich. The Warriors acquire an airship and visit the Cardia Islands to meet with the dragon king Bahamut who gives them the task of surviving the Citadel of Trials and getting a Rat's Tail as proof of their deeds. When they return he upgrades their job classes.

The Warriors defeat the Fiend of Water, the Kraken, in an underwater palace near Onrac, and Tiamat, the Fiend of Wind, in the Flying Fortress. The four Fiends defeated, and the crystals restored, the Warriors find their quest is not yet over: The power of the four restored crystals is still being absorbed by an unknown entity through a time portal located in the Chaos Shrine.

Once they travel 2,000 years into the past, the Warriors of Light meet the four arch-fiends newly created by Chaos and defeat them, before Chaos can send the arch-fiends into the future to bring Garland back to the past shortly before he would die during the fight with the Warriors of Light, and darken the crystals to steal their energy. Chaos turns out to be Garland who was not killed, but brought back into the past by the four fiends and empowered by the energy stolen from the four crystals to become Chaos. Garland originally created the time loop to live forever.

The Warriors of Light, upon defeating Chaos, return to their own time. Having broken the time loop, peace returned to the world. While all of the people are unaware the entire ordeal having taken place, and though the Warriors themselves do not recall their adventure either, order has been restored and the darkness has been vanquished.

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 **Development**

Final Fantasy was developed after Square Co.'s initial games were not entirely successful. Square Co.'s president and producer/director Hironobu Sakaguchi declared that his next game would be a fantasy RPG. He wanted the name to abbreviate to "FF" and thus Final Fantasy was born.

There's an urban legend that the 'final' in FF meant that this was our last project. While we were having some hard times back then, the truth is that as long as the title could be shortened to FF, any word would've suffice. It was initially going to be Fighting Fantasy, but there was already a boardgame out with the same name.

—Hironobu Sakagutchi

Far from being his final game, however, Final Fantasy was a success in Japan, presenting them with the second most popular RPG franchise in the country (after Enix's Dragon Quest). When Dragon Quest came out, it proved that RPGs could sell in Japan. Sakaguchi had wanted to make an RPG long before that, but couldn't get permission from the company, because they were not sure it would sell. With Dragon Quest proving that a game like that could be successful, Square were able to start the project for Final Fantasy. The development started with just four people.

The battle system was designed by Hiroyuki Itō, who had never played an RPG of any kind before developing for Final Fantasy. Itō used professional sports as inspiration, specifically American football, with parties lining up on each side of the screen, each side with a strategy.

Akitoshi Kawazu also worked with the battle system and has said he wanted to make it as close to Dungeons & Dragons role playing game as he could. There were certain precepts to a Dungeons & Dragons type of environment, such as zombies always being weak against fire, or monsters made of fire being weak against ice, in short, certain things being weak against certain other things, and strong against yet other things. Up until that point, Japanese RPGs were ignoring these kinds of relationships. Kawazu found this irritating and wanted to incorporate those precepts of western RPGs into Final Fantasy. The majority of the game's bestiary is taken from the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons, including the Mindflayer and the Ochu. The original magic system is inspired by Dungeons & Dragons as well, with a "Vancian" spells-per-day system, and with many spells and their effects, and even "spell levels" mapping directly to counterparts in the Dungeons & Dragons spell list.

Kawazu feels that the fun in an RPG begins by creating a character, and he didn't feel the need to have a suggested party at the beginning. Kawazu wanted players to have an option to be all Black Mages or all Warriors if they wanted. In those days it was customary not to think too deeply on these things, and the imbalance a free party creation could have was never really thought of; the idea was to let people figure things out for themselves.

The game was programmed by Nasir Gebelli, and it was the first time he had programmed anything like an RPG.

The company initially forecast the game to sell around 200,000 copies, but Sakaguchi was upset with that number, and demanded at least half a million. The company still put the limit at 200,000, so when the the first pack came from the production facility, Sakaguchi took every single ROM to every publication out there at that time, and did his own PR with the game.

Following the successful North American localization of Dragon Quest (as Dragon Warrior), Nintendo of America translated Final Fantasy into English and published it in North America in 1990. The North American version of Final Fantasy was met with modest success, due partly to Nintendo's aggressive marketing tactics. No version of the game was marketed in Europe or Australia until 2003's Final Fantasy Origins.

Final Fantasy, along with the original Dragon Quest, proved to be one of the most influential early console role-playing games, and played a major role in legitimizing and popularizing the genre. Graphically and musically, it was a more polished effort than many of its contemporaries. Many modern critics point out that the game is poorly paced by contemporary standards, and involves much more wandering in search of random battle encounters to raise experience and money, than it does exploring and solving puzzles. However, this was a common trait for role-playing games of this era, and one that, in some respects, would remain in place until the mid-1990s. Another critique of the original release is that, in some senses, it barely works; certain stats don't influence combat, certain status effects are nonfunctional, and some elemental weaknesses don't apply. None of these render the game unplayable, however, and many were not confirmed or even noticed until years after the fact.

Final Fantasy has been remade several times for several different platforms. While the remakes retain the basic story and battle mechanics, various tweaks have been made in different areas, including graphics, sound, and specific gameplay elements. What follows is a brief description of certain characteristics unique to each remake.

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 **Themes**

The game lays out the foundation for future installments by introducing the Warriors of Light who are chosen by the Crystals to save the world. True to its name, fantasy elements are highly present, wanting to show a fantastical world which players would traverse through and explore. The NES version includes some futuristic settings in the latter parts of the game, which were toned down in redesigns when the game was ported to other platforms with enhanced graphics. However, since its inception the series has been a mix of futuristic and medieval elements, such as the hardest enemy of the original Final Fantasy being a robot (Warmech). Final Fantasy derives a lot of influence from the Dungeons & Dragons in regard to world building, jobs and stats, as well as monster designs.

The story entails the theme of the triumph of good against evil, beginning with the common telling of heroes embarking to save a princess. Afterward the warriors are told their journey has only just begun. Such deconstruction and rebuilding of a trope at a time where similar games—like Dragon Warrior, Legend of Zelda, and Hydlide—shared many of the same tale, but whose quests ended upon the rescue of the princess and slaying of the antagonist, desired to show there being more than the completion of the quest, not just in gameplay, but in the reward of story as the game progresses.

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 _This is the end of Chapter 1. Which also is about the First Final Fantasy Game_


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